<aside> 🚨 Seeding the next era of fund managers.

</aside>

Overview

We built this scout program to play positive-sum games with a very select group of talented people in our audience.

Here are the condensed thoughts that led to the creation of this scout program:

• Existing incentives do not favor junior VCs. We have run a compensation survey the past four years, and we found that 53.2% of VCs earn zero carry for their work. 86.5% earn under 5% of carry. In other words. The majority of venture capital investors (especially junior VCs) don’t have skin in the game, and they are not able to play long-term games.
• Building a track record is the most important aspect of being an investor. Track record is the first question that pops up when it comes time to raise a fund. It’s what LPs care about most, and it proves a persons’ judgement and ability to win quality deals.
• Most VCs today lack the ability to build their track record. Because most investors do not get upside in their work, it is hard for junior investors to prove that their deals are their deals. When it comes time for these people to launch their first fund, this makes it harder for them to raise from LPs because they can’t justify the work that’s led them to that point.

Edge

Here is why you should think about working with us > joining another scout program.

• Unique access to the best collection of junior investor and operator talent: Confluence was built specifically for this group of people, the community has ~2,500 vetted investors, and the newsletter has ~20k high-quality candidates. This audience will continue to act as a source of future scouts and deal flow, the quality of candidates will improve as the rest of our business grows, and scouts will benefit through their involvement and interaction with other scouts.
• Platform to showcase scouts: Our scouts will already come with their own audience, network, and deal flow, but we are positioned to help them grow their influence more. Our newsletter has highlighted Confluence members over the past two years, and it has become a trusted media channel for the entire venture community (~20k daily readers, ~49% open rate, ~6% CTR). We are not ashamed of talking our own book, and we will use this channel to showcase scouts and the companies they choose to back.
• Advantages to finding downstream capital: Confluence members come from all parts of the venture capital world. When a scout backs a new company that is looking for new capital, we will be able to connect the dots to who they should be speaking with in order to make that happen.

Structure

Here is how the scout program works:

Fee structure: Scouts will receive 25% of the carry (5%) for every deal they lead that turns into an investment. No more than two scouts are allowed into a single deal.

Scope

Scouts are allowed to be agnostic, but we will not invest into anything biotech, hardtech, or media-related / reliant on advertising revenue.

Below are some verticals that we have done deep dives on ourselves:

Market maps:

https://confluencevcweekly.beehiiv.com/p/growing-revenue-per-employee

https://confluencevcweekly.beehiiv.com/p/modern-investment-firm

https://confluencevcweekly.beehiiv.com/p/market-map-finance

Selection

Scouts are selected on a rolling basis.

• Application links are shared daily in the media business
• Interviews are scheduled for the best applications that stand out
• Scouts are onboarded within a week of the interview if they are chosen to move forward